This invention relates to a method for producing a greater amount of a tufted pile fabric and more particularly to an improved method of producing a novel article of manufacture more economically.
It will be understood that, in the tufting of pile fabric and particularly carpets, a series of needles are positioned in a needle bar and carry the pile yarns through a backing fabric which is advanced over a throat, oscillating loopers positioned underneath the throat engage the pile yarns and the loopers may be positioned to provide cut pile or uncut pile as may be desired.
Further, the use of tufting machines has become widespread because of their vastly higher speeds and thus their ability to produce greater lengths of carpet. Yet for all their speed, the amount of yarn consumed and waste yarn has also increased.
In conventional tufting processes the width of the needles being threaded will usually be wider than the width desired for the finished carpet. Further, each of the needles in the needle bar is threaded with the same quality yarn as is used throughout the entire carpet being tufted.
Likewise, it is conventional for the backing material to be wider than the area being tufted so that a portion of the backing material along each side of the carpet remains free of carpet yarn. While this portion of the backing material is used to hold the carpet during subsequent finishing operations, this material must be trimmed away from both sides of the carpet before the carpet itself is ready for sale. During this trimming process, several tufted rows of carpet yarn along the entire length of each edge are also trimmed away so as to produce the desired width for the finished carpet.
As indicated the width of the backing material is somewhat wider than the desired width of the finished carpet, which generally is between twelve to fifteen feet. The extra width is provided so that the tufted carpet can be conveniently held by tentering frames or other finishing equipment as for example during the application and curing of laytex or other binder materials to the back of the carpet and also during the application of secondary backing materials.
Following the last finishing step and prior to the carpet being prepared for shipment, the edges or selvage portions along each side of the carpet are trimmed by trimming devices which generally are circular knives. These knives are positioned at each edge of the selvage and are adjusted so as to not only trim off the excess width of the backing material but also to trim away the excess rows of the tufted yarn so as to achieve the desired finished carpet width and to form smooth straight edges. Since the amount of the tufted portion which is trimmed will usually vary between one and three percent of the original carpet area, the trimming step wastes a great deal of first quality yarn. Thus, the primary object of the present invention is to reduce the amount of first quality yarn wasted due to selvage trimming.
The present invention accomplishes the primary objective by making use of carpet yarn which for any reason could be considered to be waste yarn. The only essential requirement would be that such waste yarn must exhibit sufficient strength to be tuftable.
In many instances yarn from different dye lots will be leftover. This is so since yarn dyeing is conventionally done in a batch operation. Thus, while desirable it is sometimes difficult to reproduce the exact shade from batch to batch making it often impossible to use yarns dyed in different dye lots in a continuous tifting process. If the yarns were mixed, slight color variations would remove the completed tufted carpet from a first quality status. Thus, with each dye lot there is some amount of leftover yarn which cannot be used to produce sufficiently long lengths of tufted carpets.
In other instances, the amount of yarn dyed to fulfill carpet orders will exceed the amount of yarn necessary to complete the order, or the yarn may have been incorrectly dyed or in some other way improperly prepared. For whatever reason, however, a certain amount of yarn waste is a necessary part of carpet tufting operations.
As a result, yarn which might otherwise be first quality yarn becomes low cost leftover waste yarn. Traditionally, such yarn is saved and when a sufficient amount has been collected, a carpet referred to as candy stripe will be made from such yarn. Since yarns of numerous colors and types are used, such carpeting is usually sold at a much reduced price.
In the present invention, this cost cost waste yarn which is collected from previous tufting operations is used to thread those needles in the needle bar which will produce rows of tufted loops forming part of the selvage of the carpet. Since the selvage portion is discarded, economics of production are realized if the discarded portion contains low cost waste yarn rather than the relatively high cost first quality yarn.